MASHABLE - Nov 11 - Between September and October, according to Apptopia, major dating apps grew considerably. Match grew 21%, OkCupid +21%, and Bumble +16%. Tinder and Hinge grew more modestly. "As people become more isolated, the desire and need to establish some sort of intimacy may also be increasing as a coping mechanism," said Dr. Ash Nadkarni, MD, Associate Psychiatrist and Instructor at Harvard Medical School. New positive dating habits are emerging. Match's CEO, Hosseini foresees singles taking their dating app usage more seriously and Match was already seeing a slower shift from hookup culture to more intentional dating. Match's Singles in America survey, released last month, (5k+ people), found 58% of single app daters shifted toward more intentional dating due to the pandemic. 63% said they're spending more time getting to know potential partners. 70% said they're being more honest in their interactions. 45% of Hinge users reported developing new healthy dating habits during the pandemic, such as being up front about what they want. Hinge dates went up 17% this summer, ghosting went down 27%.
991 posts categorized "Match.com"
Dating App Usage Is Changing for the Better
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Could Hinge Be Match Group's Next Tinder?
THE MOTLEY FOOL - Nov 10 - Tinder dominates Match's revenue. It has grown from around zero revenue in 2014 to ~$1.4B this year. Match.com and other legacy websites like PlentyofFish make up around a third of sales. The smallest part of Match's current portfolio is the "emerging opportunities." It includes brands like Ablo, Pairs, and Hawaya, but is led by Hinge. Hinge is "designed to be deleted," meaning it targets people in the slightly older millennial cohort looking for long-term relationships. Match doesn't disclose Hinge's nominal revenue numbers. However, the app downloads year-to-date were up 82%. In fact, the company disclosed in its Q2 report that Hinge users have grown more than tenfold since 2017. With ~10M downloads globally, Hinge may be on the verge of what Tinder achieved a few years ago: hitting escape velocity in its target market.
by Brett Schafer
See full article at The Motley Fool
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TinderTales Podcast With Comedian David Piccolomini & Mark Brooks
TINDERTALES - Nov 2 - In this episode "So You Want to Date During a Pandemic", Mark and David talk about what makes a profile stand out, early online dating and how dating has evolved during a pandemic.
David: How did you get into the business of online dating?
Mark: I started a social and adventure club in Silicon Valley in 1996. When it got to 3,600 members, people started meeting and marrying which wasn't really the intention and I thought: "this is kind of nice, this is a lot of impact." So then I worked with Hyper Match in 2000. It was like an early eharmony. Members had to answer 200 - 2k questions. And then in 2002 I worked with Friendster where I ran parties called Friendster Exposed. But the code wasn't quite up to the level of scale they were getting to. And then Myspace came along and they got it right. So I went over to the dating side of the house. I worked with FriendFinder and OkCupid and then I got three job offers. So I took all three and started Courtland Brooks, which is my consultancy.
David: What were the first mobile dating services?
Mark: Webdate was way ahead of everybody. Then there was Lavalife that did SMS, Match had a WAP app. Back then, it was tough to get on deck, so you had to talk to Verizon and Sprint and negotiate a deal for distribution. People are complaining about paying out 30% to Apple right now. I think it's actually a very fair deal if you look back at what it used to be. Verizon, Sprint, and etc were taking 70%.
Mark: What's your favorite app?
David: Honestly, I like Tinder a lot. As long as you know how to advertise yourself properly, you can have relatively good success there. Hinge is doing a really good job at attracting the market that it wants to attract.
Mark: There's a saying that guys will lie about wanting a long term relationship, and women will lie about wanting a short term one. It's funny how some societies are really put offish when it comes to having intercourse and it's like they're missing out on a vital form of communication before commitment.
David: How so?
Mark: I think you get to know someone when you have intercourse with them. That's the ultimate form of communication between two people. I've studied behavioral science and I think people tell you everything if you only observe.
David: Let's talk about dating and corona. What's new?
Mark: Business has been good for Internet dating companies right now. They're ~20, 30% up, which is amazing. But the users' behavior changed. There's an interesting study that RealMe just did. RealMe found that 67% of online daters are less okay with being single right now. And apparently two in three online daters have lowered their standards. A lot of dating apps have moved towards video and a lot of people kind of warm up to one-on-one video dating. And there's one to many videos taking off.
David: What is that?
Mark: It started in China with an app called Momo. Then in the U.S. there is The Meet Group. They're actually doing these games now. So someone who isn't really comfortable with video can go in and have a look at someone else dating. People can warm up to the concept.
Mark: And there's also a safety aspect as well. People tend to approach Internet dating with rose colored glasses. In fact, there's something called halo effect. And the guy who told me about this is Dan Ariely some years ago. He said, one of the things that happens is when someone goes into a dating app and they see someone that has some attributes that are close to what they're looking for, then they'll tend to fill in the blanks.
Mark: RealMe are doing background checks and they're doing it in a very different, interesting way. They're showing a trust scale, rather just saying, "Hey, this person's a felon."
David: What do you think actually goes into a really good profile?
Mark: The mistake that a lot of people fall into is generics. They don't make themselves stand out.
David: Yes, standing out is huge.
Mark: We load people up with lots of choice, which is good and bad, because there's the paradox of choice. We're in some ways a rotten business because if we do a really good job, we wave goodbye to our users. So we want to do a good enough job that people rave about us, but we don't want to wave goodbye to our users.
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Match's Annual Singles in America Survey - Video Is the New First Date
PR NEWSWIRE - Oct 6 - Match has released initial findings from its 10th annual Singles in America study. This 2020 data on 5k singles provides insight into how singles navigated dating during a year of unparalleled political, economic and social change. 58% of single app daters have shifted toward more intentional dating in the wake of the pandemic. 52% have changed the qualities they look for in a potential partner and 44% say they had more meaningful conversations with a date in the last month. Daters are focusing less on looks and more on honesty, transparency and meaningful conversations. About one in four singles broke up during lockdown (26%), and 22% of singles lost contact with a potential date. One in five singles video dated during the pandemic (19%), including half of Gen Z singles (50%) and 1/3 of Millennials (29%), an ~25% increase in video dating over the last 3 years.
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Muzmatch Expands Ethnicity Filters
SALAAM GATEWAY - Sep 29 - In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, several dating and matrimonial platforms pledged to remove their ethnicity filters in a bid to fight discrimination.One of them is Indian matrimony website Shaadi.com. The company ditched its skin tone filter in June 2020. The site previously asked users to declare the colour of their skin using options such as "fair", "wheatish", and "dark". Other companies have defended their continued use of ethnicity filters, such as Match. Muzmatch removed all its colour-focused groups, such as Black/African and White/Caucasian and added choices such as European or West African. According to Muzmatch, ~52% of matches on the app are between members of different ethnicities. UAE-based Muslim matchmaking app Veil say that the app's twelve ethnicity/nationality search list options are based on Veil's user feedback and common search data. The company does not plan on making any changes to those areas.
by Heba Hashem
See full article at Salaam Gateway
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Match Is Launching New Feature Called Dates
MASHABLE - Sep 15 - Match will prompt users and ask if they're ready to move to the next step if a conversation looks promising. The pop-up allows them to share how they're feeling about someone without the potential awkwardness of their match not reciprocating. According to Match's recent survey, 93% of users said they'd like to know if someone on a dating app is as into them as they are. 66% have wrongfully assumed a match's interest level. Once both people are ready, the profiles move to "Dates," a dedicated section of the app. From there, they'll learn about their match's dating preferences like how they prefer to social distance, and what their ideal first date is.
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How the Pandemic Has Changed Dating
TODAY - July 28 - Tinder recorded its highest single day of swiping this year, while Bumble hit a milestone of 100M users. Some apps, like Hinge, are integrating new features, like in-app video chatting, to help people connect online. Dr. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and the chief science advisor at Match.com, says that the pandemic has led to a major change on dating apps. "This pandemic has led to more conversations, more meaningful conversations, more self-disclosure, more intimacy (and) less anxiety about sex and money," she said.
by Kerry Breen
See full article at Today
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What Was the First Online Dating Site?
FOX BUSINESS - June 15 - Gary Kremen founded the Match.com as one of several online classified ad businesses he planned to develop. The idea for the revolutionary platform came to Gary Kremen while he was in the shower. "I thought it would be really interesting to use the Internet for relationships, and to do it right," he said. By 1994, he owned the domain Match.com. The website went live in April of 1995. In 1997 Match was sold for $7M to Cendant, a Connecticut consumer-services company. In 1999, IAC acquired Match.
by Daniella Genovese
See full article at Fox Business
Mark Brooks: Not quite true. Webpersonals was started by Andrew Conru in 1994, and sold to the company that would become Lavalife in Canada. Webpersonals was the first. Not Match.com. Dr Conru then went on to start FriendFinder in 1996.
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Match Is Still Refusing to Let Bisexuals Choose More Than One Gender
PINK NEWS - June 3 - Despite the fact that bi+ activists have been rallying for the feature for years, the company refused to allow users to choose more than one gender. Moreover, it emphasised that it offers "two-gender preferences", stonewalling non-binary users from joining. "Our site is for everyone but at the moment it's only set up for two gender preferences," the website's Twitter account stated. "Members can set up two profiles with their preferences and they only have to pay for one."
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Q&A With CEO of Match.com Hesam Hosseini
DMAGAZINE - May 22 - The coronavirus pandemic has forever changed the way singles connect, says CEO of Match and Match Affinity, Hesam Hosseini.
Q: How are you coping amid the COVID-19 crisis?
A: Our mission of sparking connections has never been more important. We want to do everything we can to help singles feel less isolated and more connected.
Q: Did your business continuity plan work, or were there surprises?
A: We had to reprioritized our roadmap and went to work building new ways for our members to connect.
Q: What are the short-term ramifications for your specific industry?
A: The tools singles are using to connect changed overnight. Now 70% of our members would use video chat; before pandemic, it was only 6%.
Q: Have you found silver linings in these difficult times?
A: I think our team has become closer than ever.
Q: How are you maintaining your company culture?
A: We hold all of our meetings over video and we use Slack constantly. We get together via virtual happy hours, puppy parties, story time with kids, mindfulness activities, and we even celebrated our 25th anniversary over Zoom this week.
Q: What will things look like for your company and industry in another six months?
A: We will likely keep some work-from-home flavor for a little while as we slowly dial back to normal, whatever that may look like.
by Ben Swanger
See full article at DMagazine
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See the top news on Match Affinity
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The Top Dating Industry News for May 12th
OPW - May 12 - Tinder's Video Dating Feature, Match Group Q1 Financial Results, Helen Fisher on Dating in Pandemic, The Meet Group Q1 Financial Results.
For the top weekly dating industry news in ~2 minutes subscribe to OPW's Two Minute Tuesdays (TMT) podcast on Breaker , Google Podcasts
, Spotify
, Anchor
, Stitcher
, Overcast
, Radio Public
or Apple Podcasts
. Listen to the trailer for the channel.
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Some Dating App Users Are Listing Their COVID Status
BUSTLE - Apr 24 - For Maria, 38, a Tinder user, listing her health status is something she'd consider doing in order to match with more people and score more dates. "I was just speaking to a friend about dating amid COVID, and my plans to get an antibody test to determine my exposure," she tells Bustle. "In jest, I said I would post my test results if I had been exposed, in hopes that it would make me more marketable!" The problem is, many people can carry the virus without knowing it, or pick it up after testing negative. And that's why experts agree this trend is not only unhelpful but potentially dangerous. "This virus is so new, and there is the possibility of false positives or negatives, and who knows if new strains may even emerge," says Rachel DeAlto, the chief dating expert at Match. "For the time being, I don't think it's necessary and can potentially be inaccurate." A Bumble representative tells Bustle that ~100K users have updated their dating profiles to mention that they are self-quarantining.
by Carolyn Steber
See full article at Bustle
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How COVID-19 Killed Hookup Culture and Saved Romance
FAST COMPANY - Apr 21 - The use of Match, OkCupid, Tinder, and Hinge is surging, and video dating is becoming more and more normal, as people look for meaningful connections. But, with the world enduring a new lonely normal, single people are having to adapt, and there are few other options than video dating. Many of the world's biggest dating brands have rolled out new in-app video calling features - offering virtual happy hours, hotlines to dating experts, and ways to "date" people around the globe. The major dating apps are reporting surges in messaging. On Tinder, daily conversations have risen by 20%; OkCupid has seen a 30% increase in messages sent on the app globally since March 11. "We readjusted and reprioritized our road map," said Match's CEO Hesam Hosseini. Video chat wasn't a priority before the pandemic, when only 6% of users expressed interest in the feature. Due to the lack of other options, that interest has spiked to 69%. "I think we'll look back on this period and find that folks were forming pretty strong connections."
by Talib Visram
See full article at Fast Company
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The Top Dating Industry News, Podcast
OPW - Apr 21 - Bumble's New Features, Match.com's Vibe Check, eHarmony's Video Feature, Tagged's 1:1 Video Chat & Blind Date, Shaadi to Conduct Weddings Through Video Conferencing.
For the top weekly dating industry news in ~2 minutes subscribe to OPW's Two Minute Tuesdays (TMT) podcast on Breaker , Google Podcasts
, Spotify
, Anchor
, Stitcher
, Overcast
, Radio Public
or Apple Podcasts
. Listen to the trailer for the channel.
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Match CEO Says Video Dating Will Be Lasting Trend Post-Coronavirus
CHEDDAR - Apr 18 - Hesam Hosseini, CEO of Match told Cheddar Friday that despite being stuck at home, people are still looking to mingle. Many couples have been trying 'video dates' to connect with each other, although the CEO said couples started trying that method even before the coronavirus outbreak began. "Video has been around within dating, but adoption has been pretty low. We ran a survey and during COVID-19 we found that ~70% of singles are now interested in trying video, which is what led us to launch Vibe Check on Match," he said. Vibe Check is an in-app video calling service that allows singles to safely video chat with each other before deciding whether to exchange phone numbers. Hosseini thinks video dating will last after the pandemic is over.
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